Artificial Moon

Apparently, China is making its own artificial sun and moon.

This article is about China’s artificial moon.

China, the next superpower of the world, is again trying to achieve something which will leave people in awe. It is planning to launch an artificial moon in 2020 at a distance of 500 km from the earth.

The fake moon is not exactly a light source like its artificial sun counterpart, but actually is a reflective surface, a mirror to reflect Sun’s light. This is similar to the real moon. It has no light of its own and reflects Sun’s light.

It is not the first time man has attempted to reflect the sun’s light for illumination. This has been attempted before, by Russia’s Znamya Project. It consisted of employing a series of orbital mirrors to reflect sunlight and beam the solar power to Earth.

But it had technical failures and Russia stopped funding the project. This project, however, became the basis of China’s artificial moon project.

The first man-made moon will launch from the Xichang satellite launch center located in Sichuan on a rocket. It will orbit 500km from the earth’s surface.

The international space station also orbits the earth at around 500 km. It is not that big but this is how it looks from the Earth.

You can imagine how the artificial moon would look. It will shine 8 times brighter than the moon and illuminate 10-80 km.

This, however, is a test run.

If this first test goes well, China will launch 3 more moons by 2022.

It will surely reduce the electricity cost of urban cities, and increase tourism. People are going to come from far and wide to see the artificial moon.

China already suffers from light pollution, maybe this moon will help to curb it.

But not everything related to the project is beneficial.

The way our ecosystem works, the organisms are dependent on our natural sun and moon. If we try to recreate the moon artificially, It will surely affect the biological life cycle of animals. Nocturnal animals, that wake up at night will be affected by this fake moon.

This may prove harmful to the environment in the long run.

More problems will arise, but that will come into the picture only after 2020.